Related Links

UPDATE: Airline flight missing near Vietnam had two passengers with false ID

WASHINGTON POST

Published: Saturday, March 8, 2014 at 6:23 a.m.

Last Modified: Saturday, March 8, 2014 at 6:23 a.m.

BEIJING - A Malaysia Airlines flight that disappeared from the sky is presumed to have crashed in the Gulf of Thailand off Vietnam with 239 people aboard, including two who appear to have been traveling with false identification.

That led to speculation about terrorism and added to the mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, a red-eye carrying passengers from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing that vanished from radar after midnight Saturday.

The Vietnamese government said in a statement that two oil slicks spotted off the southern tip of the country were between six and nine miles long and were consistent with what would be left by fuel from a crashed jet, according to the Associated Press.

But 24 hours after the plane disappeared, the airline posted a notice saying it still had no idea of the whereabouts of the Boeing 777-200 aircraft.

“An international search and rescue mission from Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam was mobilized this morning,” the airline said in a statement. “At this stage, they have failed to find evidence of any wreckage.” There was no distress signal from the plane’s pilots, and crashes usually happen during takeoff or landing. That heightened concerns about reports that two men listed on the airline’s manifest of passengers were not on the flight.

The men, one from Italy and the other from Austria, both had reported to authorities that their passports had been stolen in Thailand.

Asked whether terrorism was suspected in the plane’s disappearance, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said authorities were “looking at all possibilities, but it is too early to make any conclusive remarks.” U.S. officials said the cause of the crash remained unclear but that intelligence agencies were examining the possibility of a connection to terrorism.

There were no reports of bad weather in the area.

The plane carried passengers from 14 countries, including three Americans, according to the manifest posted on the airline’s website. They were identified as Philip Wood, 51, an IBM employee working in Malaysia; Nicole Meng, 4; and Yan Zhang, 2.

In a brief interview, Wood’s mother, Sondra Wood, of Keller, Texas, said she had received a call from the U.S. Embassy in Malaysia. Her son had just been in Texas visiting her and her husband, she said, and she knew he would be on the Malaysia Airlines flight.

“He was a wonderful person and very intelligent,” she said. “I could talk forever about him. He’s my son, and any mother would be proud of their son.” Aside from his work at IBM, Sondra Wood said, her son loved building furniture. “He was very artistic,” she said. Philip Wood has two sons, ages 20 and 24, his mother said.

Austin-based Freescale Semiconductor confirmed Saturday that 20 of its employees were aboard the plane. Twelve are from Malaysia and eight are from China, the firm’s president and chief executive, Gregg Lowe, said in a statement.

Vessels and planes from Southeast Asia have been scouring the waters in the part of the ocean where the oil slicks were spotted, and Razak said “the search-and-rescue operations will continue as long as necessary.” The Philippines and Singapore sent planes to help in the search, while vessels were dispatched from the Philippines and China, news agencies reported. Vietnamese fishermen were also put on alert.

U.S. 7th Fleet officials said in a statement that the USS Pinckney, a guided-missile destroyer, and a P-3C Orion aircraft were being sent to help in the search.

Meanwhile, there were questions about the identities of two passengers after evidence emerged that they could have been traveling with stolen passports.

Italian news media had initially listed Luigi Maraldi, 37, among the passengers, but he reportedly phoned his parents Saturday to say he was safe in Thailand. His passport had been stolen there last year, the reports said, and he had been issued new documents.

“One hypothesis, therefore, is that he was listed because someone boarded the plane using his stolen passport,” the Corriere della Serra newspaper reported.

Similarly, Austrian news media reported that an Austrian citizen had been listed as among the passengers but had been found safe. His passport was stolen in Thailand two years ago, the Austrian Foreign Ministry said.

Flight MH370 lost contact with Malaysian air traffic control at 1:20 a.m. Saturday (12:20 p.m. EST Friday), less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur and as it was completing its ascent. It vanished on the border of the territorial waters of Malaysia and Vietnam, where the Gulf of Thailand meets the South China Sea. It had been due to land at Beijing at 6:30 a.m. Saturday (5:30 p.m. EST Friday).

In Beijing, relatives and friends of those on board were taken by minibus from the airport to a hotel in the city to wait for news. Grief was mixed with anger at the lack of information, with Malaysia Airlines insisting it was still investigating the incident. Earlier, it had cited speculation that the plane might have landed in Vietnam, but this was later denied.

The airline said it had sent a team from Malaysia to the hotel in Beijing to look after the relatives. It said it would pay for immediate family members of passengers to gather at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport The plane’s sudden disappearance without calling for help brought back memories of an Air France flight that disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1, 2009.

While some wreckage and bodies were found in subsequent weeks, it took nearly two years for the main wreckage and the plane’s flight recorders to be recovered. The final report said that pilot errors in responding to technical problems led to the crash.

“We are doing everything in our power to locate the plane. We are doing everything we can to ensure every possible angle has been addressed,” Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters near the Kuala Lumpur airport, according to Reuters. “We are looking for accurate information from the Malaysian military. They are waiting for information from the Vietnamese side.” The South China Sea is a tense region of competing territorial claims among a number of countries, but the plane disappeared well away from the disputed waters, and countries in the region appeared to put aside their differences in their search for the plane.

“In times of emergencies like this, we have to show unity of efforts that transcends boundaries and issues,” said Lt. Gen. Roy Deveraturda, commander of the Philippine military’s Western Command, according to the Associated Press.

EARLIER

Search and rescue crews across Southeast Asia scrambled to find a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 that disappeared from air traffic control screens over waters between Malaysia and Vietnam early Saturday with 239 people aboard.

Less than one hour after Flight MH370 left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing, the plane disappeared from radar. More than 12 hours after contact was lost, there was still no sign of the aircraft, and no wreckage had been spotted.

Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said there was no indication that the pilots sent a distress signal. The fact that there was apparently no call for help suggests that whatever happened to the flight occurred quickly.

The plane, which carried passengers mostly from China but also from other Asian countries, North America and Europe, was last spotted around where the South China Sea meets the Gulf of Thailand.

At Beijing's airport, authorities posted a notice asking relatives and friends of passengers to gather at a hotel about 15 kilometers (nine miles) from the airport to wait for further information, and provided a shuttle bus service. A woman wept aboard the shuttle bus while saying on a mobile phone, "They want us to go to the hotel. It cannot be good!"

Relatives and friends of passengers were escorted into a private area at the Lido Hotel, and reporters were kept away. A man in a gray hooded sweatshirt later stormed out complaining about a lack of information. The man, who said he was a Beijing resident but declined to give his name, said he was anxious because his mother was on board the flight with a group of 10 tourists.

"We have been waiting for hours," he said. "And there is still no verification."

The plane was last detected on radar at 1:30 a.m. (1730 GMT Friday) about 75 nautical miles (85 miles, 135 kilometers) north of the Malaysian city of Kuala Terengganu, said Azaharudin Abdul Rahman, Malaysia's civil aviation chief.

Lai Xuan Thanh, director of Vietnam's civil aviation authority, said air traffic officials in the country never made contact with the plane. The plane "lost all contact and radar signal one minute before it entered Vietnam's air traffic control," Lt. Gen. Vo Van Tuan, deputy chief of staff of the Vietnamese army, said in a statement.

The South China Sea is a tense region with competing territorial claims that have led to several low-level conflicts, particularly between China and the Philippines. That antipathy briefly faded as nations of the region rushed to aid in the search, with China dispatching two maritime rescue ships and the Philippines deploying three air force planes and three navy patrol ships to help.

"In times of emergencies like this, we have to show unity of efforts that transcends boundaries and issues," said Lt. Gen. Roy Deveraturda, commander of the Philippine military's Western Command.

Thanh said Malaysian, Singaporean and Vietnamese search officials were coordinating operations. He said Vietnam had sent aircraft and ships scour 11,200-square-kilometer area where the plane was last known to be. Vietnamese fishermen in the area have been asked to report any suspected sign of the missing plane.

Asked whether terrorism was suspected, Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said authorities had "no information but we are looking at all possibilities."

The plane was carrying 227 passengers, including two infants, and 12 crew members, the airline said. It said there were 152 passengers from China, 38 from Malaysia, seven from Indonesia, six from Australia, five from India, four from the U.S. and others from Indonesia, France, New Zealand, Canada, Ukraine, Russia, Italy, Taiwan, the Netherlands and Austria.

In Kuala Lumpur, family members gathered at the airport but were kept away from reporters.

"Our team is currently calling the next-of-kin of passengers and crew. Focus of the airline is to work with the emergency responders and authorities and mobilize its full support," Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said. "Our thoughts and prayers are with all affected passengers and crew and their family members."

Fuad Sharuji, Malaysian Airlines' vice president of operations control, told CNN that the plane was flying at an altitude of 35,000 feet (10,670 meters) and that the pilots had reported no problem with the aircraft.

Malaysian Airlines has a good safety record, as does the 777, which had not had a fatal crash in its 19-year history until an Asiana Airlines plane crashed in San Francisco in July 2013, killing three passengers, all teenagers from China.

Finding planes that disappear over the ocean can be very difficult. Airliner "black boxes" — the flight data and cockpit voice recorders — are equipped with "pingers" that emit ultrasonic signals that can be detected underwater.

Under good conditions, the signals can be detected from several hundred miles away, said John Goglia, a former member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. If the boxes are trapped inside the wreckage, the sound may not travel as far, he said. If the boxes are at the bottom of an underwater trench, that also hinders how far the sound can travel. The signals also weaken over time.

Air France Flight 447, with 228 people on board, disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1, 2009. Some wreckage and bodies were recovered over the next two weeks, but it took nearly two years for the main wreckage of the Airbus 330 and its black boxes to be located and recovered.

Malaysia Airlines said the 53-year-old pilot of Flight MH370, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, has more than 18,000 flying hours and has been flying for the airline since 1981. The first officer, 27-year-old Fariq Hamid, has about 2,800 hours of experience and has flown for the airline since 2007.

The tip of the wing of the same Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777-200 broke off Aug. 9, 2012, as it was taxiing at Pudong International Airport outside Shanghai. The wingtip collided with the tail of a China Eastern Airlines A340 plane. No one was injured.

Malaysia Airlines' last fatal incident was in 1995, when one its planes crashed near the Malaysian city of Tawau, killing 34 people. The deadliest crash in its history occurred in 1977, when a domestic Malaysian flight crashed after being hijacked, killing 100.

In August 2005, a Malaysian Airlines 777 flying from Perth, Australia, to Kuala Lumpur suddenly shot up 3,000 feet before the pilot disengaged the autopilot and landed safely. The plane's software had incorrectly measured speed and acceleration, and the software was quickly updated on planes around the world.

Malaysia Airlines has 15 Boeing 777-200s in its fleet of about 100 planes. The state-owned carrier last month reported its fourth straight quarterly loss and warned of tougher times.

Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged.